I got back to the walking today and had high expectations of doing some good walking, but they were stopped by terrible weather.

Early on it started raining hard, and at times it beltet down. It was very cold, and just on the verge of snowing.

I was following a road that at times turned into a big mud hole. The sides of the road had several cm’s of water and mud at times.

After more than an hour, I passed by a lady sitting motionless on the other side of the road. At first I didn’t react – probably because I’ve seen so many farmers in their fields lately. But there was something out of place, so I stopped and turned around.

She was older than I thought – older than 75. She was thinly dressed, and she had modern jogging shoes on. This made even less sense, so I crossed the road, and that is when I started realizing what was wrong.

She was covered in mud and freezing cold. I tried to make contact with her, but she didn’t answer. I pulled her carefully to her feet, and that’s when I understood the poor lady must have been there a fairly long time. She was shivering uncontrollably, and had no energy to get to her feet by herself.

From the effort of standing up, she bent over as to throw up, but nothing came. She had saliva coming down from her mouth. Then I noticed she had a new cut on her cheekbone. From this, and the fact she wasn’t answering any questions about where her house was I gathered she must have slipped and got severely shaken, perhaps even had a mild stroke. She held hard on to me as we stood there together in the rain. She swayed from side to side trying to find her balance.

There were plenty of cars driving slowly past and I tried to flag down quite a few, but none stopped. I asked her many times which way her home was. She pointed one way, but a minute later started walking the other. She held a firm grip onto me, and together we slowly got to a house.

We entered, but the woman there said she didn’t know who the old lady was. I said she must be from the area. Together, we walked further up the sidestreet and ended up at a home for old aged. Nobody recognized her there either, and they seemed eager to get rid of the problem. I said that was not happening as long as I was there, and told a guy to call the police.

He called, and started talking to them. I saw that the old lady was sitting in a warm room and out of immediate danger. Then I thought it best to vacate the premises to avoid a long talk with the police about a situation I couldn’t help them with. I went out to discover it had started snowing heavily.

I would rather not think what would have happened if I had not passed by her when I did, and this evening my thoughts go out to her hoping she has a hot meal in her stomach, shelter above her head, and hopefully some family around her.

10 kilometres today